


the idea of grace

by orphan_account



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Gen, Homelessness, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Molestation, POV Outsider, Post-Betrayal, Protective Simon Lewis, Random Encounters, Simon Lewis Needs a Hug, Starvation, Stayin' Alive, Transphobia, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, and something almost like forgiveness, and systemic issues, but is lowkey BAMF regardless of his starving state, cafes and backstreet jazz, tfw when u r tryna outrun a kill order, tread carefully y'all, use of explicitly offensive words, your local vampire Cares™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22504021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The guy nods as if he understands. He really looks like shit, Al thinks.Or: Simon stumbles through Brooklyn, half-starved.
Relationships: Simon Lewis & Raphael Santiago, Simon Lewis/Raphael Santiago
Comments: 4
Kudos: 108





	the idea of grace

**Author's Note:**

> READ: transphobia/homophobia/sexual assault is explicit in the first bit of this fic. please beware, this is your warning. if you can't read through it, use ctrl F and skip to the following line:  
> She’s already turned the corner by the time [...] 

Ma says most of these things happen in cramped spaces, where people are packed in so tight it doesn't matter where someone else's hand ends up, how someone else could brush a finger along the insides of your thighs and no one would say a thing about it.

It matters, she had said. _Mi amor,_ Ma had said, and had taken Alessandra’s hand and gripped it so hard the bones in her fingers had creaked:

It fucking matters.

Of course it happens at night.

The man slides one hand under her skirt, and then jerks it back as if fucking burned. From the bottom of her soul, she wishes her crotch could--fucking shoot lasers into anyone who looks at her the way this man does now, with rampant disgust and contempt like he hadn't been the one with a finger up her cunt.

"You're a _man,"_ he says, spat. Like it’s something dirty. And, honestly? 

She turns, like a whirlwind. " _Y_ _ou_ are," Alessandra says, deep and gravelly and still not yet fully the way she wants it, but in this moment she loves it, loves it for all the surprise and fear it can still tear out. "And you put your hand on me, anyway." 

It’s dark, and cold, and no one else is around, and maybe that’s what enables this monster of a human being to reach out and shove her back, the disgust turned sharp in his face, on his mouth. 

“You want me to treat you like a pussy?” he hisses, and Alessandra feels her teeth scrape on teeth. You already have. All of you, all the fucking time.

“Treat me like a human being, you twat,” she snarls, hands out of her pockets, and her fingers flex as if to close around the shape of her tennis racket. But she wants a knife. But all she has are her dorm keys, almost useless in her palm until she closes her fingers over them. Her other hand clenches air until her fingers holds fast in a fist and it’s almost like the world is whistling with the wind, the temperature dropped lower than it ever has around her. 

It’s dark, and cold. Her body rages hot. And maybe this fucker sees it in her face, in her eyes, in the edge of her mouth pulled back to reveal teeth, because he takes half a step back and she thinks, _too late_.

She punches him. In the throat, the way Pa taught her to, with keys clenched in her palm just for that extra ounce of hurt. 

She watches him go down. When she goes home, Ma will take one look at her and both of their hearts will crack just that little bit more.

Fine, that’s fine, Alessandra thinks. She hadn't needed saving tonight. 

She’s already turned the corner by the time that unmoving glance of shadow reaches a clawed hand out and drags the semi-conscious man off the sidewalk, into the dim blackness of an alleyway.

She’s already climbed the stairs to her Ma’s apartment when the semi-conscious man becomes fully conscious, in the grip of another creature who stares down at him with cold, unfeeling eyes. 

She’s already in her Ma’s arms when the creature smiles, slow, showing a perfect row of teeth: “So, never try that again, yeah?”

There's two of them. One of them looks like he has hair gel slicked down to the skin of his head, and the other one looks horrible, like he'd climbed out of a car crash and had forgotten to go to the hospital.

Kaz blinks. They are not just facing each other, they are facing off. Like the villains and the heroes he reads about in comic books. Even the tension in their backs is there. It's weird, it's strange, and it makes him scared.

"I'm not going back--"

"--don't be stubborn, Shelly--"

"Magnus--"

One of them stops. The one that looks like he crawled out of a hole in the ground stares straight at him, and Kaz freezes. The one with the cool hair notices and turns around too, and makes a small sound.

"Oh, sweetie," he calls. "Isn't it past your bedtime? Where's your daddy?"

"I don't know," because he doesn't, and he's scared. Which one of them is the hero and which one is the villain?

Cool Hair approaches him slowly, hands up. Don't talk to strangers, his mom had said. Don't believe anything they say, his mum had said.

"I won't hurt you," Cool Hair says. It sounds like a promise. "Then you will," Kaz says. Cool Hair shakes his head, surprise taking over his face. "Me? Never. Really, little one, I want to help you get home." His voice sounds nice, soft, perfect for bedtime storytelling. Maybe even better than his mum's.

"Okay," he says, a little grudgingly. "But where's Car Crash Man?"

Cool Hair looks surprised again, but he turns around to look. No one is there. When he turns back, his eyes are thinned, old, the crinkles around them like his nanny's.

"I'm afraid he's gone and gotten himself into another crash, little one," he says, gentle, and smiles. "Now, let's get you back home."

A shot of black, followed by a series of fast-moving figures that she doubts are people until she catches a hint of metal, like a belt. Or.

"Did you see that?" she asks, trying to keep panic out of her voice, tugging out her boyfriend's left earphone. He makes a disagreeable sound before looking up towards the rooftops. 

"What, the stars?"

"No, the _ninjas_ ,"

No one takes these back streets; no one is stupid enough to. But it’s stupid cold, his jacket is full of holes, and the world never gave a flying fuck about him anyway.

And someone else has just wandered into his side of the alley. 

He's saying something, like most of the crazies he tries to avoid in this deathtrap of a city. Al doesn't try all that hard to hear, still frustrated with the dismal luck he’s had with finding okay-looking half-eaten food, but broken pieces of it find him through the shitty cover of a tarp anyway.

Something like a name, an angelic one, whose God could probably care less about any of them. And, something infinitely more familiar, like: “Stop it. Stop wanting him to--what? Save you? Stupid,” the scratch of metal on the wall, unsettling in the quiet of winter, even more unsettling because Al hasn’t heard a voice in days, and the one he hears talking at him right now sounds like an off-strung guitar, making up for the wrong song.

Another noise vibrates through the air, and it doesn’t sound like a knife run jagged over brick. “He’s not gonna come. None of them are, because no one fucking wants you, because you did something so horrible,” in words so quiet now he could barely hear them continue. Another low sound, a smaller kind, a whimper that follows and stutters hard out of existence.

“I’m sorry, you know,” his voice says, to someone who isn’t there. “I didn’t know what I had done until I had done it. And,” a short, hard bark of laughter. It sounded like it hurt. “I don’t know, Raphael. I didn’t fucking know. Is this what dying feels like?” 

Al crawls out of his hole, then. The guy is curled in on himself, almost in fetal position with the way his arms squeezes at his sides and the way his knees go all the way up to his chest. A simple-sleeved shirt barely stretches over his wrists, catches of skin showing through ripped jeans. His right foot is missing a shoe. How the fuck is he not--freezing? Convulsing?

“How the fuck are you not cold?” Al asks, apparently without self-preservation.

The guy draws his head up, eyes glassy. He blinks once, twice, unseeing the way drug addicts are, then abruptly startles and shoves himself back. The movement is so sharp and fast that Al balks, backing up into his makeshift tent. The fuck is that.

“Um,” the guy, or kid, or boy or whatever he is, stares at him, brown eyes deep with fear. And something else, like confusion, and--pain. “Sorry. Sorry, um, I don’t really feel it. The cold, I mean. So,” a weak shrug. “Don’t worry about it?” That sounds bad. Really bad. Who doesn’t feel cold? The dead, his brain supplies, or the dying. Hypothermia? Al swallows. The guy hasn’t moved an inch, pressed up against the wall as if he could become one with it.

If he had another jacket without holes in it, maybe he would’ve offered it. “Are you,” Al works through the dry spot in his throat. He hasn’t had a conversation in weeks. “Are you okay? You look terrible,” because of the _I didn’t fucking know_ and _is this what dying feels like_ and _Raphael._ Because mistakes aren’t death but they can come damned close.

Al kind of regrets saying anything at all when the guy winces. 

“No, um,” the guy shrugs again, a helpless notion, hands going to hold his neck. Jittery, a semblance of a tremor there. He’s abnormally pale, even in the darkness of the building’s shadow. “No, yeah, I’m fine. Did you,” a cough. Something shines off his mouth, and Al squints. “Did you hear me? Talking?” 

Well. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re kind of right next to my front door.”

“Oh,” and suddenly the guy looks embarrassed, the pale shade of him darkening. It’s gone in the next second. “Sorry for that. Bothering you and all.”

Al shakes his head, slow. This semblance of normality is--strange. It makes his stomach ache. “Couldn’t sleep anyway. Too cold.”

The guy nods as if he understands. He really looks like shit, Al thinks: dirty and pale and probably starved.

That makes two of them, he guesses. And here they are, making casual conversation like they aren't both entrenched in some deep horseshit.

Above them, the edge of the building had taken on light. The sun, finally doing its job and coming up over the world. Thank God. He looks back at the guy, whose head is tilted back and fixated on the dawning spectacle, face twisted up in a thing too complicated to name.

It's almost familiar. He's seen it cast over all the faces of people who find themselves out here, lost and fucked up with no one to point them home.

“Hey,” Al breaks the quiet. He hopes his voice carries, for how small it’s turned out to be. “You’ll be okay.”

This guy, this boy, looks at him. A smile splits across his lips, his teeth long and sharp. His eyes are sad. In the distance, the sun shines. Al hears him say thanks, but it’s far, far away.

Warmth slips over him as if it's been there all along. His shit jacket finally stops mattering. 

  
  
  


She likes this place. It doesn't offer nearly as many seasonal drinks or classics as other popular locations, but they have a wide selection of comfort food and beanbags and an actual fireplace with chopped up logs stacked up near the hearth.

It's comfortable, Paayal affirms. She turns to stare at the only customer for tonight, a young man with sunken eyes and skin the color of paper and lips the shade of copper. He looks sick. And he hasn't touched the cup of coffee she had set in front of him twenty minutes ago.

"You good?" She asks, sliding a small plate of warm pretzels in front of him. He looks up at her, slow and pained, and no, she decides, this person is really not feeling it.

"Sure," he says, jovial. His voice sounds like it could break on the next word. 

She stares at his fingers, fiddling with the cup's sleeve. "You have anybody to pick you up?"

"Yeah, yeah, um," he sucks in a breath. "Totally, just, waiting it out. I guess." 

Paayal watches him swallow, and it's painful to watch. Her dad always had said she has a soft spot for cornered animals. "Waiting on what, exactly?"

He stares dumbly at her. She gestures at his coffee. "Aside from your cappuccino."

When he laughs, it's all rough around the edges like he hasn't made that sound in weeks. 

"Yeah," the man says, swiping at his eyes. She catches a slight of dulled red. "Of course. I have," a pause that feels like a wince, "friends."

"Right," she replies. Is he missing a shoe?

Paayal clears her throat and reaches inside her apron to produce a small notebook she uses to take orders, ripping a sheet from the spiral. She makes quick work of it, and slides the slip towards him, across the wooden table. "Go here, if you want a bed to sleep in for tonight. They have other basic necessities, too, like clean clothes and underwear, water, food. Standard stuff." 

He stares at her scribbling as if uncomprehending, and she considers apologizing for going too far in her assumptions, but he pulls the scrap of paper closer with a long finger. 

"Thanks," he says, and he sounds young and tired in a way that no one should be. He leaves fifteen minutes later, coffee and pretzels and all. 

(When Al finds a slip of paper outside his tarp cover, tacked hazardously on a bunch of pretzels packed up in napkins, and cold coffee in a cup, he cries.

When he finds the first hundred dollar bill, he screams.)

This is probably some important thing he should not be listening in on, Dan thinks, idly, as he stirs his morning tea and hears the two guys outside his station yelling at each other. Well, not exactly. One of them is yelling. The other is replying in low, passive-aggressive tones. Both echo really well, in a mostly abandoned parking lot at five AM in the morning.

"You are starving yourself." 

"Well," and Dan can hear him throw up his arms, "seeing as how I'm not dead and perfectly capable of surviving, Luke, I would disagree with that statement."

"Survive?" Very very angry now. Dan takes a sip at his tea, burning half his tongue. "I can see your fucking veins, Simon! You are whiter than a full moon! And," a low growl. That--that sounds threatening. "You smell like death."

"Don't I always," the other voice isn't even yelling anymore. He sounds exhausted. The rapid pacing stops. Silence is never good like that, spread over the air like ice, not even in a mostly abandoned parking lot at five AM in the morning.

"Just leave me alone," he says, and Dan can't tell the guilt from regret in that one. 

It's a hand. A clawed hand. And it reaches for her, an impending shadow. Like doom, but less dramatic.

"Fuck," her curse is breathed an inch away from whatever is reaching for her. 

"Fuck," the thing says, and it sounds male, and it sounds like it's in pain. The hand holds still, suddenly, before clenching closed and wrenching backwards.

She sees its eyes for the first time. They are rimmed red, glinting and wide, as if cut from a used sword. 

"You should probably run," the thing says. 

She does not need to be told twice.

He must be haunted, Ben thinks. He must be absolutely fucking cursed. Because there's a man stalking towards him, hunched and his hands out like he's going do something with them. The man gets closer, and, oh, god, those are definitely, definitively, most certainly, claws. They are dull in the light, but they shift, and turn sharp. 

Oh, god.

"I don't-" Ben stumbles back, book bag hitting the wall. "I don't have money!" 

The man gives no indication that he has heard. He moves, advancing, slow and deliberate. Like he's hunting. Like. 

Oh, Ben thinks, a short-circuit of a thought. I'm going to die. His body goes cold. His knees doesn't even shake, doesn't even move--and he stops breathing. Move, he thinks. 

Move, he prays.

This close, the man looks unnerved, eyes blown wide and something as dark as blood crusted around the edges. His mouth is open, and his teeth shine in the darkness. His fangs shine. 

His fucking _fangs_. Ben can't help the scream that wrenches free from his throat. That seems to do something because everything is immediately a blur, a pressure slammed across his mouth, his head knocked back against the wall.

And then, as soon as Ben registers the pain, the pressure is gone. 

He blinks out the black edges in his vision and swallows down nausea, feeling stunned. What just? 

A hollow crash, teeth on teeth. He looks.

There's another one now, small and fast and efficient as he fends off the other man. Holding him down, actually, keeping his wrists pinned against the wall. Stance steadfast even as legs lash out. A sharp thing struggling to get free. This new man--short, dark-haired, scary, insanely strong--leans in close, words like rapidfire from his mouth. Some audible, others not, most in what Ben guesses is Spanish.

Then: "Get your shit together, Simon," angry, frustrated, demanding. The man named Simon twists, and even from here Ben can hear his bones, creaking, thrashing against the hard line of the wall. Another sound tears out of him, like a muted cry. 

Whatever is happening to him is not of his own will, Ben realizes. And then his brain has another terrible idea.

" _Dios,_ " the short man spits, eloquently. Fuck, Ben agrees, but this may as well happen.

"Um," he says into the four meters between them. "Does he need blood?"

The short man turns his head to look at him, slow, and shit. Ben thinks that he should've high-tailed it five minutes ago.

"Um," he's sputtering, somehow still speaking around the knob in his throat. "I have blood," proceeds to gesture weakly, wildly, towards the general direction of his body, "in here."

Red eyes stare at him, only undercut by the hissing of his retrained--friend? Companion? Fellow fucking vampire?

Then his face turns away, and it's almost choked with exasperation when Ben hears it, hissed into the suit of his arm: " _Ay Dios Mio,_ there's two of them."

Before Ben can even make an offended squeak, the short man looks back at him again, all coolness and sophistication. 

"Alright," he says, unflappable even as Simon manages to get a claw free. "Get over here."

Apparently this is the moment his legs decide to un-freeze themselves, because Ben manages to dislodge himself from the wall, feeling gravity in ways he never could as he wobbles closer to the man who, five minutes prior, had tried to suck him dry and the other man who is--saving them both, probably. Maybe.

Assumptions are bad enough to go on, but he doesn't have much of a choice now. 

"You will have to bleed," the short man says, once Ben reaches him. Simon jerks off the wall in another attempt to get free, fangs elongated and eyes glazed, but the short man surges forward to cut him off, freaking immovable. Ben has difficulty swallowing when he looks back again, not a hair out of place, face smoothed over in something almost professional.

"Well?" the short man says. He frees a hand, one claw already unfurled. Of-freaking-course. 

"So this is a thing now," Ben blurts, semi-amazed that his mouth can still produce speech when the short man turns a severely unimpressed look onto him. 

"Mundane," he says, and Ben shuts up. "Your blood, or I suck it from you."

And Ben hands over his wrist, angles it so the short man can reach it with a claw. The short man pauses an inch away from breaking skin. His eyes--not so red now in the light--flickers to Ben's. Could he smell fear, or is it just that obvious?

"It'll hurt," the short man says. "But you won't die, and you will have my thanks." He nods at the body pinned beneath him. "And his."

Okay. Yeah. "That's fine," Ben says, and his voice doesn't shake as he stares at Simon. He holds his wrist out, unflinching as the short man considers him for a moment more, before he pierces the skin there.

Maybe they could've been friends.

**Author's Note:**

> i? wanted? to try something new? it's impossible for me to write from simon's pov and wanted to do some other pov aside from raphael's so i was like, hey let's create a shit ton of ocs, yea


End file.
